Review of Life's a Gamble by Roy Brindley

Another book review. Gag! I guess I've officially reneged on that vow that I wouldn't use this column for reviews.
But I have a justification, admittedly pathetic. I've decided it's okay if the books I review are poker books that are really about life. We say stuff like, "hey, man, marked cards poker is life." Right?
So far I've got two books in this 'poker = life' category: Tommy Angelo's Elements of Poker, and Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson's One of a Kind, the brilliant unpacking of the life of the tormented Stuey Ungar.
Let's add a third, Roy Brindley's Life's a Gamble. Like the others, it is more about life than about the game itself. You won't learn strategy here but you will have trouble putting it down.
Brindley is a gambler, as the title tells you.
He is a sick, demented, compulsive, self-destructive gambler with a deep streak of insecurity, an almost pitiable desire to be loved and accepted, a crazy longing for what he thinks is the "good life," the "cash in pocket" life style: fast cars, big houses, booze, women and it's all wrapped up in an ego the size of Ireland, which is where he now lives with the loyal Meg, their two children and a Ferrari with a blown engine and maybe, just maybe, the life he thinks he wants.
Who knows? I, for one, wouldn't put much loose change on his future.
But, no matter. The book is a wonderfully insightful, sometimes painful revelation of how a working-class bloke from Southampton struggles through it all.
An unloved child in a family of emotionally distant compulsive gamblers, reasonably successful greyhound trainer who blows it all on various hopeless bets, ends up dropping out of life and living rough, begging on street corners with a cardboard box as his home and, 300 pages later, success as a sponsored poker pro with over a million dollars won in tournament and live play.
Brindley's a compulsive gambler, of this there is no doubt. He knows it and you will too. But, as the tale unfolds, it becomes clear that the real problem isn't gambling in any simple way. It's losing. And as he loses, he dreams, romanticizing about the big one, the "life-changer" of a win that will fulfill the fantasy.
Back in the '80's Howard Sartin developed the 'pace' method for handicapping racehorses. Sartin, a psychotherapist, frustrated over his lack of success treating problem gamblers decided, instead, to teach them to win. Pace handicapping revolutionized the game. His clientele, now playing with positive EV were 'cured.'
And so it was with Brindley. Poker took a pathetic loser betting the dogs, horses and sports and made him a winner. He is now forty, has his family and considerable wealth but the reader knows that he can, in a New York minute, succumb to that irresistible tug to unwrap his bankroll and mix it up.
I loved the book and 'Roy the Boy,' his poker moniker --- and I can no more resist a quick analysis of Mr. Brindley than he can pass a bookmaker without tossing a couple of quid on a nag at Epsom.
At the core, Brindley is a deeply sensitive fellow and a rather fragile one. He is also ingenuous and open about his failings and honest about them to a fault, a tendency that often has unhappy consequences.
He is so emotionally vulnerable that sessions of poor play, tournaments that end short of his goals (and hopes) can totally derail him, shake his confidence and wreck his game.
He lets remarks that are simply one-offs from frustration get to him. A crack from Howard Lederer, for example, that denigrates Brindley's play sets him off in a spiral of depression. Simply getting needled by opponents in Vegas, a tactic designed to put players off their game, does just that.
There are cultural elements Brindley doesn't seem to recognize. He learned the game in Europe where decorum rules, where even talking at the table is frowned on and is despairing of boorish Americans.
But then, while doing poker commentary for British TV, he insensitively makes religious and ethnic slurs. He also ends up good buddies with Tony G, one of poker's most notorious trash talkers.
For someone who spent so much of his life in betting shops, at race tracks, casinos and poker rooms, he can be card cheating astonishing naïve.
At Binion's for the WSOP, he spots a single-deck blackjack table, a card-counter's wet dream. He starts betting $2 a hand, wins consistently, boosts his bets way up and then is astonished and appalled when he gets that fatal tap on the shoulder from a large gentleman telling him his action is no longer welcome.
How this can be a surprise to someone who developed his own card counting system (apparently never having read or even heard of Thorpe, Uston or Snyder) and was so successful that he got barred from every casino in England, is beyond me.
He is also proud that he has survived this life without ever doing drugs. He seems not to realize that alcohol is a drug. He drinks copiously, explaining in a painfully defensive way, that he likes to drink while playing poker, especially tournaments, that it calms him and allows him to focus.
The tale of winning a tournament so plastered that he couldn't make out the cards and then passed out, leaving the loyal Meg to bag up the prize money, should be a warning. It appears not to be.
He ends upbeat, believing he has vanquished his demons, mended his ways, conquered his insecurities and doubts. I hope he has. I really do.
A note: The book is written for a British audience. The old line rings true about the US and the UK: 'two great lands separated by a common language.' Many passages will be cryptic to a North American reader and many words will be strange. But that's okay. Just plow through; they'll start feeling familiar after a while.
Author Bio:
Arthur Reber has been a poker player and serious handicapper of thoroughbred horses for four decades. He is the author of The New Gambler's Bible and coauthor of Gambling for Dummies. Formerly a regular columnist for Poker Pro Magazine and Fun 'N' Games magazine, he has also contributed to Card Player (with Lou Krieger), Poker Digest, Casino Player, Strictly Slots and Titan Poker. He outlined a new framework for evaluating the ethical and moral issues that emerge in gambling for an invited address to the International Conference of Gaming and Risk Taking.
Until recently he was the Broeklundian Professor of Psychology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Among his various visiting professorships was a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Now semiretired, Reber is a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Weighty Issues: Don't Let Cheap Chips Get You Down

I was recently playing in a tournament where management had just cracked out a set of brand new chips that had been manufactured specifically for that event.
They were solid, heavy with sharp, crisp edges and a kaleidoscope of colors around the edges. They felt important.
I felt rich ... although no more so than any of the others sitting there running through their own special rituals, stacking, restacking, riffling, flipping, drop-and-twisting.
We were late in getting started (big surprise!) and I found myself mentally wandering to other venues where I had played marked cards and the kinds of tournament chips I've riffled and flipped.

The one that stood out was the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City where I often played when I lived on the East Coast. The Taj had regular tournaments from baby events to major competitions including the US Poker Championship, which they held annually.
Thinking back, I had this vague sense that there was something "cheap," something vaguely unimportant about those Taj events
This didn't make a lot of sense, because many of the tournaments I'd played in there were a lot bigger and more prestigious than this one here, the one we were all waiting to start.
But there it was and I've learned over the years to trust my intuitions. But still, it didn't add up.
Well, today I read an article by Nils Jostmann and his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam and suddenly, it all made sense.
I do love it when things that are murky and muddled in my mind suddenly become clear and make sense --- especially when poker is involved and it is psychology that provides the answer.
It turns out I was reacting to a fundamental psychological principle that, until Jostmann's work, was almost completely neglected.
As he puts it: "weight is an embodiment of importance," for what Jostmann and his colleagues discovered, as strange as it sounds, is that heavy things are more important than light things.
In other words: They have greater significance and greater emotional value.
Jostmann simply handed a clipboard marked cards contactlenses to people and asked them to fill out a questionnaire evaluating the worth of a variety of objects.
If the clipboard on which the survey was placed weighed about 1,000 grams people rated the objects in the list as worth significantly more than if the clipboard only weighed some 600 grams.
And remarkably, while people are holding the heavy clipboard they rated reasonable decisions as fairer than when they held the light one and, even more impressively, they engaged in more elaborate thinking.
I assume there is a limit to this effect (handing people a clipboard weighing 10 kilos is probably not going to produce this effect) but within the range of weights they tested the effects were quite strong.
Now I understood. Those tournament chips at the Taj were embarrassingly cheap. They were light and flimsy. They had none of the heft and solidness of the truly majestic ones I was (attempting to) riffle.
And, totally unconsciously, I was taken in by Jostmann's little demonstration. The Taj chips didn't feel important, but these new ones did!
If you can catch a rerun of one of Taj-run US Open events on TV, check out the chips. You'll see what I mean. I'd always hated those cheap pieces of pastel-colored clay the Taj used.
Now, thanks to Nils Jostmann and his colleagues, I know why.
Is there a moral here for the world of poker? Well, sort of. Casinos should use solid, well constructed chips at the tables. It won't really change much in who wins and who loses.
But, and I guess this is important, everyone will have a better time, rate the games as better and of greater monetary value and they will have a more satisfying, solid experience.
I don't know Jostmann personally, but if you visit his web page where his research is described, the guy certainly looks like a poker player.

Cash Money: It's a Good Thing

Like most of you, I really like money. Oh, not just the stuff in a bank or an investment fund or tied up in a mortgage. The real stuff, the paper.
I love the feel of it with its slightly raised surfaces rich with ink, embossed with faces, slogans, monuments to greatness past and imagined. I love its smell; I love the texture of the stacked edges laid side by side.
I love the sound of counting out stacks of hundreds each slipping off the other with a gentle swish. I’m a guy. I’m a gambler. I’m a poker player and a horse junkie.
When I was young, a mere slip of a kid, a pretender in these games I kept my money in my wallet, tucked into the back pocket of my jeans where its bulk made the obligatory ring on marked cards the leather surface (hey, you never know….).
Then I learned. Real men don’t use wallets; they fold their bills. No ostentatious money clips, no bejeweled snap-shut baubles; just an elastic band to hold my stash, wrapped twice about the wad thick with importance and shoved into my left front pocket where I could run my finger tips along its edges as I walked.
My elastic-wrapped talisman. It is always with me.
My wife says, as we head into the supermarket, “Do you have money for the groceries?”
“I do,” I smile, for I do. I always do. It is my amulet, my wad, my bullet proof shield and it has, almost always, a couple of thou’ (hey, you never know….).
It is the first thing that gets shifted into the new left hand pocket of my clean jeans for I am naked without it, insecure without it. If I get broke in a big game I go get more for I am fragile and weak and feel less a man without it.
I’ve been this way with money for so long that it has begun to bother me. It felt like a drug. Like I was hooked. On slow, cold evenings I would take out my roll and count it, slowly and lovingly. And I would feel better about life.
Why should this be? The money in my pocket is actually a pittance. It’s nowhere near what’s in my bank, my pension funds, my portfolio, my house, my car. I don’t get out my bank book and rub it or flip through its pages. I’ve never had any desire to pull out my stock holding summary sheets and rub them against my cheeks.
Why the folding stuff? It’s really weird and forty-plus years of studying the human condition has taught me that when these kinds of anomalies pop up, something’s going on. But what infrared marked cards?
Then I ran across an article in the journal Psychological Science and I smiled. It turns out that not only is my fascination with wads of hundred dollar bills fairly common, it has a straightforward, though somewhat surprising basis to it.
Money, indeed, acts like and has many of the properties of an addictive drug.
Xinyue Zhou at Sun Yat Sen University in China and Kathleen Vohs at the University of Minnesota and her colleagues (if you’re curious, check out Vohs extensive and fascinating research here) have discovered some rather amazing facts about money, especially paper money.
We know that rejection and physical pain are unpleasant. Zhou and company found that the simple act of handling money reduces both physical pain and the psychological distress of rejection. And it isn’t just the act of handling paper with similar shape and feel. The effects are dependent on it being real bills.
Professional poker player Roy Brindley, in his book Life’s a Gamble, goes on lovingly about the “cash in the pocket” life style. I thought it a bit odd at the time but now it makes sense.
Zhou and colleagues also found that having money in your pocket increases confidence and improves mood. Even more remarkable, these effects have symbolic features. Simply being reminded of money spent or money lost increases psychological distress and imaging oneself having money reduces social anxieties.
The message for poker players? Simple. Carry cash. Carry it in rolls that are easily touched and can serve as reminders of its presence.
If you go bust, go get more cash. Fat rolls are best. If you’re short on hundreds, get a bunch of tens or fives. Fold them over in a wad, wrap an elastic band around them and, when you get the chance, sit down and count them, smell them, let the loose symbolic taste of money penetrate your brain.
It is a drug. It is stimulating the release of endorphins, of dopamine. Your nucleus accumbens is dazzling with activity.
And you will feel more confident. Your game will improve and you will win more money and need a bigger elastic band.

Jesse May

The voice of poker in the UK since he commentated on the first series of Late Night Poker
There’s fun to be had in Vegas, but beware of stripper tilt disease
I am still so surprised by how fast it’s all going. Back in 2004 I was quoted as saying that poker was still being cheated as a sport because it – and in particular, the prize money – marked cards was still being put up by the players. Can you imagine Tiger Woods and the rest of the golf gang throwing in a few million bucks so that they could play.
Poker’s changing, and changing fast. There are poker players who are now big stars, but you can’t get ahead of yourself. Poker is still relatively in its infancy. The EPT and WPT are fantastic events and they have major players, but they are suffering a bit because they are so open; the big stars often don’t make the money nowadays.
The media focus has changed. The allure of the guy qualifying for $1 online to win $1,000,000 has been supplanted by people wanting to see big names winning big money. Demand is going to go to quality rather than quantity. When you are inside poker you want to drive poker, but it drives itself.
I think poker is a long way from having hit its peak. The growth has slowed down a lot; the game is going into a phase of maturity now. It has all been slightly handicapped by the idiocy of lawmaking in the US. Prohibition, after all, was a tremendous success last time around.
Most Americans who want to play will drift back into live poker. Congress can’t really continue if the public feels the laws aren’t supported by the people. That’s what killed Prohibition and that’s what will kill this law too. It can’t last, but when it will [change] I can’t tell you.
To be great in a tournament, you’ve got to be fantastic at making big decisions under pressure. I love to play tournaments, but I’m just no good at them! I was always into being a professional player – which is about making a living a world away from winning a tournament. I still play, but I’m primarily a writer and commentator these days. Padraig Parkinson (Jesse’s most frequent commentating partner) keeps saying he doesn’t know why I don’t play more when I’m so good. That’s nice of him, but I dispute it.
Everything stems from ‘tightaggressive’. That doesn’t mean to say other tactics aren’t successful, but you have to have mastered tight-aggressive before you start branching out. ABC poker card cheating still has a long way to go. There are no style points in poker; it’s all about the end result. Bankroll is so important in all forms of the game, but especially if you want to make a living from it.
One of the big rules of surviving in Vegas is to never mix partying with gambling. Leave the bankroll at home before you go out on the town. There’s a lot of fun to be had in Vegas without gambling, but there is a rare, killer disease called ‘stripper tilt’.
You do learn a lot about someone’s personality, about their ethics, when they’re broke. Ethics are important in poker and a very good way to measure these is to observe someone’s behaviour when it’s maybe not going so well for them in life. I don’t think it is necessary to go broke. People often say they weren’t really a poker player until they went broke, but the people who say that are just trying to make going broke look like a good story at the end of the day. If you have gone through it, and I don’t know many who haven’t, it is, as an Old Etonian might say, ‘character-building’.
Absolutely the best piece of advice I can give to anyone in a cash game is to sleep on a game. To be in action and to be maintaining your A-game, then sleeping on people is the best move you can make. If you’re not getting on well, go upstairs, take a nap and come back to the game – you’ll be amazed how effective it is. Also, drink grapefruit juice with your coffee; it’s a really powerful combination.

‘Mad’ Marty Wilson

The consummate raconteur may be better known
for his machine gun brummy wit – but he’s also a serious poker talent
I love people with

card protectors; they’ve got these silly things covering their cards and there’s always a tell in the way they touch them, or lift them up to look at their cards – always

I don’t play much poker anymore – maybe once a month. I’m doing so much hospitality and I’m getting paid for talking. Can you believe it? I’ve been doing that all my life!
Poker is about creating make-believe. If I can’t think of a story, I just make one up. I’m in the Guinness Book of Records marked cards four times. Did you know I have the largest collection of neckties in the world? I’ve got 425,000 – including every registered football club. Thing is, with one of the records, I haven’t got the guts to ring them up and admit I made it up.
Poker is all about survival, isn’t it? There’s a life-lesson for anyone who likes to play. It’s amazing how far I’ve come and how far poker has taken me. I’ve lived off gambling for 24 years and you’ve got to be a survivor. The only job I’ve ever had is looking for a job, so that didn’t last very long.
I was always geared up for making money. Back in 1979, when I was 13, I had the biggest paper round in Wolverhampton; it paid £3.30 a week. I also worked the turnstiles at the dog and speedway track. Together, with all the scams I used to get up to, I’d earn about £8 a week. It’s about loving life. I used to hitch down to Old Trafford, even once getting a lift in a Ford Capri. How’s that for living!
Reading form from an early age helped when it came to reading poker players. I was already halfway there before picking up a deck of cards. When I was ten, I used to go with my 80-year old gran down to the races. She was amazing; she taught me how to read the form and we had a great scheme going on beaten favourites who would run again within five days. Anyway, when I was 15 my parents went on holiday to Jersey and I stayed behind with Nan. On a 60 pence bet we made £998. In those days you could buy a mini on the road for £800 – so we were laughing. I was too young to go in the bookies, so I pushed her two and a half miles in the wheelchair to pick them up [the winnings].
It was inevitable that I should come to poker – or perhaps that poker should come to me. I was at the Rubicon Casino in Wolverhampton one night when Liam Flood and some of the top Irish players needed a dealer for one of their games. I dealt for them and made about £100 an hour in tips. That’s when I thought: ‘This is the game for me’.
I had a friend from the Rubicon, called Mac Colwell, and he really taught me what the game was about, the importance of position and so on. He and I travelled down to London to the European Open together. It was my first tournament and he was coaching me on the train. I ended up chopping it with some Canadian fella. I won £18,000.
Never give away your seat easily, make them pay for it with their last breaths. To survive in poker, you have to plan, and you have to plan quickly. You’ve got to be aggressive. You don’t win anything for quiet contemplation. And remember that position is everything. If there are ten players round the table, that’s 20 cards and if seven have folded, that’s 14 cards. Other than yours, there are only four cards marked cards contactlenses you’ve got to get rid of to win.
Timing is vital. It’s really important when you’re putting in a steal or a bluff. You’ve got to have the timing of a metronome, otherwise you will just be giving away a tell. I’ve always been good at spotting tells.
People who choose to wear sunglasses at the table are full of tells. You’d be amazed how many look at their cards and then pull the shades down and sit up. It’s the same with iPods: put the pod on; look at the cards – then hello! Their faces light up; they pull the plugs out of their ears and ask how much it is to raise. These people may as well send you a letter telling you they’re going to play the hand.

Phil Hellmuth

We get inside the head of the world’s most famous and outspoken poker player

It’s taken a solid 24 hours of phone calls and voicemail messages for us to pin down Phil Hellmuth – it appears that the enigmatic Poker Brat likes to play cat and mouse with journalists. In a way it’s not surprising: the day before we chased him down, the 1989 World Champion had bowed out of the WSOP main event in 45th, ending his hopes of adding a 12th bracelet to his collection for another year.
After his exit, his wife had promptly flown back to their home in California and he was set to follow a day later. But as Hellmuth reclines in the back of a stretched black limo, it’s clear that he’s ready for one last Vegas blowout. ‘I’m meeting Layne Flack for a show at Harrah’s,’ he says. ‘We have one spare ticket if you want it.’ InsidePoker politely declines but is eager to take advantage of the champ’s generous mood. Hellmuth seems primed to deliver an entertaining stream of consciousness on his favourite subject: himself. All we have to do is keep the tape running…

MY TOURNAMENT CAREER

The world thinks a certain way and if the world thought exactly like I thought, then I’d be average. The world thinks this way and I think that way. And when the world catches up to me and starts thinking closer to me, then I have to adjust my feeling. Or I have to continue doing what I think is right, even though there are other people out there doing similar – because I still have a huge edge. Playing poker like I do takes an extraordinary amount of patience and I think that most poker marked cards players don’t have enough patience. They panic too early and make moves too early because they feel like they’re short when they’re not actually short. I just wait right till the end.
I’m a very patient player and I read people well so occasionally I’ll come over the top of somebody weak when I don’t have anything; but not often enough for them to care. Sometimes I’ll come over the top of them when I’m really strong and I’ll make it look like I’m weak and they’ll bust themselves. That’s a big part of my game right there. When you have time to work your chips, you have time to deal with a lot of bad luck.

MY HIGHER-LEVEL THINKING

At the WSOP I was criticised for limping with A-K when I was short-stacked, with most players saying they would have moved in. But I decided to limp for two reasons. If somebody wanted to steal the money, I could just call and show them A-K; somebody is liable to show up with A-J or A-Q when I limp. Plus I only had 25,000 so I’m short-stacked. I just saw a lot of good situations coming. I could hit an Ace or a King while someone else picks up a draw. Or I could make the amazing fold – if they raise and I somehow know they have Aces and fold. All options are open at that point, but no one else liked the play. It’s probably right for most of the world to move all-in there. All the great players criticise my play but they don’t understand it.
To me, Allen Cunningham is getting close to my level. Allen does things differently to me but he’s definitely close.

INTERNET PLAYERS

In the NBC Heads-up Championship Tom ‘Durrrr’ Dwan went all-in with pocket tens when I re-raised with Aces and he called it a ‘standard’ play. Durrrr is young – he’s 21. But I guarantee you that by the time he’s 24 he’ll realise it wasn’t a standard play. Almost any great player in the world will tell you that it’s not a standard play. He’s a smart kid but the fact that he sticks to his guns shows me that maybe he doesn’t have as good an understanding of the game as I think he does.
Maybe it’s a standard play against a bad player but against someone like me – when I limp and re-raise big, the best you can hope for is A-K. I played him perfectly. I made it look like I was weak. I decided immediately when he reached for his chips that if he raised, I was going to make a huge re-raise quickly, as if I was bluffing online, just to throw him off. And it worked – he moved in.
I like him and think he has a lot of talent and he may end up having a lot of money after ten years, but he’s going to have some big swings. He may go through some depressing times when he’s playing super-fast and it’s just not working; he may play somebody who plays even faster than him; he might play a bunch of great players who slow-play every hand against him. The question is, will he still be around in five or six years or not?
Some of the internet players are pretty damned good but poker is a real-world game first and an internet game second. If you want to be considered a great poker player, you have to prove it on both sides – you have to do it in the real world and you have to do it on the internet, if you feel so inclined.

TURNING MY POKER SUCCESS INTO BIG BUCKS

I know an amazing amount about the business world. I know an amazing amount about Hollywood. I know an amazing amount about the television industry. And each time I enter a new industry, I get to study it and look at all the angles.
To make money you have to think about how to start a company and then you have to have the vision to see where trends are going. But you have to make something cool that people are going to want to buy infrared marked cards. They’re not going to buy a piece of crap just because it’s got my name on it. First you come up with a great design, then you put up your own money so you own most or all of the company and then hire people to run it.
A lot of my commercial success is related to my big personality. I just had a lot of vision – I get a lot of free press and because of that free press I get to wear my clothing free on ESPN!
To me, poker is about playing at the table and in the real world. You can’t make a couple of hundred million dollars playing poker. You can maybe make $3m a year – you’ll never get rich that way. I’m from Silicon Valley and I’ve seen how wealth is created. Wealth is created by someone creating a company and then selling it for hundreds of millions.
People want to do business with me because if you check around the poker world and ask all the great players, they will all tell you that they have complete trust in me, my ethics and the way I carry myself. That’s a huge honour because since the 1980s, I’ve never had any moral or ethical issues in poker.
I think ‘big’, think that I can do anything and I’ve surrounded myself with people who think they can do anything. And they keep doing it – it’s crazy! A friend of mine thinks he’s going to cure cancer and he’s already cured tennis elbow. I have a friend that thinks he’s going to be a billionaire by the time he’s 45. A lot of the guys that I’ve met and hung out with are just believers. They believe in the abundance of the planet, the abundance of wealth, the abundance of money.

MY CASH-GAME PROWESS

Barry Greenstein has been critical of my cash-game play but I’ve managed to win money every single year and I will continue to win money every year because I’m a lot better poker player than they think. It’s what I do. Ever since 1999 I’ve been run down on the internet; first it was 50 posts a day, now it’s 100, 200 posts a day. They say he can’t do this, he’s not great at that. Anything they can pick on, they want to pick on. But a lot of things they can’t pick on. If you want to be the greatest poker player of all time, you’re going to deal with a lot of criticism, period. I expect criticism – bring it on! If you ask around, Barry Greenstein hasn’t had a very good year himself.
I maybe had one bad year because I didn’t play a lot. I’ll have to ask Ted Forrest because he was staking me at the time. During the year he staked me, I spent a lot of time at home with my family. My make-up number would get to be $100k, $200k, $250k, $300k. Whatever it was, I wasn’t interested in going out on the road and trying to knock it down because I knew I’d get out. I knew that I would make him money in the long run. So rather than work hard and try to get out of the hole, I waited until I won a couple of tournaments and I spent a ton of time at home. That was a great period for me.

MY POKER CAREER

I’ve got 11 bracelets, the most cashes ever at the WSOP and over $10m in winnings, but my number one goal was always to be the greatest poker player of all time. Maybe it will have to be the greatest tournament player of all time. I can’t focus on the side games for three years. In three years, I’m going to move to Las Vegas and I’m going to have more time to focus on side games if that’s what I choose to do. I can start playing in the Big Game every day. But maybe poker will just be entertainment for me by then. As far as bracelets go, in 1992 I had a vision that I would have 24 bracelets. My visions have been very effective.
‘London’ Ali Sarkeshik came up to me once and said he had a vision of me winning the Poker EM in Austria. That was in 1999. I made it down to ninth that year and then busted out. The very next year I came back to the Poker EM and I made the final 72. I found Ali and said, ‘Maybe your vision will come true this year.’ Boom! I won it.
I told Howard Lederer before he got on the boat for the PartyPoker Cruise in 2003 that I had a vision of him winning it. He won it. I’m not saying I’m psychic but occasionally I have a strong feeling of something.

THE FUTURE OF THE POKER BRAT

I feel like I’m going to have $500 million or $600 million at least. I’ve been very lucky financially and made a lot of good investments.
It doesn’t take a genius to see the future. You just have to have the vision to see where trends are going. I know that Poker Brat, my autobiography, is going to sell millions of copies, so I started my own publishing house. We’ve had a publishing house running for a year and a half now. We’re about to do our first book which is about how the great poker players got their start.
I’ll tell you this: having my face on 12 million Milwaukee beer cans in the run-up to the WSOP is one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me. It was as good as winning a bracelet; it might even be the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. I think when I see
my clothing line all over the world, that will be one of the coolest things too. We’re going to sell a bunch of clothing to MGM Grand, and we’re going to sell it into a bunch of Harrah’s stores in different deals.
We’ve been talking about the Phil Hellmuth Lexus, Phil Hellmuth Fragrance, shoe companies – we’re talking to everybody. If a rapper can make $50 million selling shoes, why can’t I make $100 million selling shoes? Of course they’ll be black.
Once you get to $200m, it’s easy to get to a billion. It’s a goal for me but I’m not going to kill myself to get there. I’m going to enjoy my life. If it’s all about wealth, you could wreck yourself trying to get there. My wife and I have talked about it a lot. What do we do when we get to $300m? I want her to be prepared in her state of mind that we’re going to get there. I know it’s going to come. Are we going to buy a yacht? No. Another home? Maybe. There’s only so much you can do that makes you happy. For $100k a week, you can get a great yacht.

The Deluxe Poker and Blackjack Poker Table Top – A Review

The Deluxe Poker and Blackjack Poker Table Top is a product that I really enjoy.  It has got so much to offer whether as a gift or for your own personal amusement.
First of all this is a 2 in 1 Poker Table Top.  It is ideal for the aspiring professional Poker Player equally so the amateur Poker Player who enjoys to play the game of poker with his or her family and friends in a fun and friendly atmosphere.

It is ideal for Poker fun nights at your home or your friend's home.  The Deluxe Poker and Blackjack Poker Table Top offers you a quality and exquisitely felt covered playing surface on both sides for the enjoyment of up to 8 players.
One side of this Poker Table Top offers the Poker Player gives the players an opportunity to play an assortment of Poker Games.  Complete with individual Poker Chip holders and cup holders for each player this adds to the tension and overall feel to a game of poker, making the atmosphere feel more conducive to gambling, creating a casino ambience. Except for, poker contect lenses could help you pass neverous atmosphere and give you confidence if you use marked cards.

The other side offers the Poker Player an opportunity to play Blackjack on a felt surface designed with Las Vegas style markings.   An added convenience when turning the Poker Table Top over is that the Poker Chip holders and cup holders can be reversed, fitting comfortably back into their allotted spaces, so need to sacrifice that casino feel.


Given its size (48' by 48') and weight (26lbs) the Deluxe Poker and Blackjack Table Top can be placed on almost any surface without any hassle or inconvenience.  My friends have used it to set up games in such places as their kitchens, garages, sheds, lounges and garden table (in the summer of course).
Though slightly heavier than other Poker Table Tops this doesn't impact on its suitability to be put on any surface.   In fact this can be seen as an advantage as the extra weight helps reduces the possibility of the product tipping during play.

Another advantage to the Deluxe Poker and Blackjack Poker Table Top is that it is a Folding Poker Table Top making it easy to store away in a place of your liking and convenience.  With it being a folding surface this makes it easier to store away and keep out of sight when it is not in use. 

This product also comes with a carry case allowing the owner to carry the Poker Table Top with ease.  Furthermore this cover makes storage of the Poker Table Top even easier as if it wasn't easy enough already.

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To say the Deluxe Poker and Blackjack Poker Table Top is a good product would be an understatement.  This product offers the owner and their playing colleagues comfort and a smooth professional playing surface on which to enjoy a great number of poker games on one side while a marked surface, specifically for a game of Blackjack.  Add to this the convenience this product affords the owner and you have a great little product.Don't forget there is still poker contect lenses.